how did you discover zines?

[paganfrog]

so i just joined this website yesterday and have joined a few groups that appeal to me. this one seemed a great place to come as i am a lonely zinester in a place that has no zine distros, library or as far as i know, no other zinesters. i thought i would start a discussion on here.
so if you are in the same situation as i am, how did you discover zines?

[Tiara Shafiq]

From the Internet - people I knew kept talking about it and I thought "hmm, interesting". I ordered a few zines, got reading, and found them interesting! I wanted to start a zine thing back home but never got round to it.

I moved from Malaysia to Australia two and a half years ago and there's more access to zines here. i also managed to get PayPal and went zine shopping! hahahaha

[silverinsanity]

When I was homeless in BC, I met a guy who once made zines. I was still clueless as to what exactly they were until I was hitchhiking about and came across a copy of she's got labe. Ha ha! It was a great introduction!

[Amazing Sunflower]

I was involved with the Crescent Wrench Bookstore & Infoshop in the mid '90s in New Orleans. I met people in the collective who read zines and made zines and shared their zines with me.

[womans monthly]

My situation isnt as bad, but im there isnt any kind of zine community whatsoever where reside/come from.

I had read a few zines, but didnt really take them seriously. I discovered them through deciding to create my own 'independent magazine' which was actually a zine, only i ahve been insisting on calling it a 'magazine'. I am new to understanding the whole zine culture thing. its pretty exciting, but im also happy that Ive created something that exists separate to that category, even though i am now becoming more inspired by the culture.

[Jme Hash]

Hmmm...I don't really remember. Maybe it was Micheal Diana's "Boiled Angel". I really just thought that was a comic. About 12 years ago I was trying to do a zine w/ an 'x' that he called "Buzzbomb" but then we found someone already had a magazine called that. So it never fell through.

[TheUnrememberedOne/MorbidiaDrekk]

I believe I've known about zines since they were chiseled onto stone tablets. But I only started reading and making them when I stumbled across them on etsy awhile back. Unfortunately I don't know anyone in my area who shares my interest, but that's not unusual for me. I'm always doing things that no one around me gets. I am, however, converting my best friend to the way of the zine. I love warping minds... heh

[Teresa Brennan]

I was introduced to zines while I was a teenager in Hawaii-- this was 13 years ago. A friend of mine was into zines but didn't really advertise her love of them until I showed an interest. It was wonderful! I think I borrowed everything she had before I decided to start buying them myself. My first zine bought was called Fetal Position and it was made by another zinester in Aiea, HI. I honestly have no idea how I found her... I think it was through an AOL chat room. I finally made my first zine three years after I was introduced to them and... well... it was a horrible one page piece that I had handwritten and only made five copies of. I don't even have the original anymore. I have made a few zines here and there since then but have been stagnant as far as writing goes for the last few years. When I was in Hawaii there wasn't much of a scene and zinesters were scattered all over the place. Now, however, I know there is a much larger scene and even a zine library somewhere. I currently live in Fall River, MA and have been for a few years now. I haven't had the opportunity to visit the Boston Zine Fair yet... I plan on making a trip this year since Boston is only an hour drive from me. I hope to actually have more (new) zines of my own to trade.

[DJ Burnett]

When I was a teenager I got a copy of Writer's Market and I'd go through it looking for possible markets for the weird little stories I was writing. I found a lot of 'little magazines' that were cheap and much more fun to read than any mainstream magazines. Didn't discover until much later that there was a whole 'zine culture' and so forth. The main one I read folded and I forgot about them completely.

Until a few weeks ago. I was searching for god-knows-what and found a link to a local 'Arts' blog. Realized I knew the blog's author from a writing group I attended in college. So I poked around. There was an article on zines with links to Xerography Debt and a few other sites.

I had been feeling the urge to 'make something' for a month or two. I get these often, it seems. I especially like doing self-publishing type projects. There's something about writing, editing, doing layouts and creating a solid final result that really appeals to me. Anyway, this urge was to make something in booklet form. So I read the zine article and something clicked.

I started working on my first (ever) zine that night. Less than a week later it was done and in my hands. It felt great, and I had so much fun making it . So I emailed this guy I used to know that writes that blog and thanked him. He did me a huge favor without knowing it.

[Eunice]

I've only recently got into the mainstream zine thing. In 1980 I joined the British Science Fiction Association and discovered that there were these things called fanzines. I remember that the first ones I got were from Chuck Conner (anyone know him?). After I joined the Brum group (the Birmingham SF group), I really got into fanzines, apas and all that. I was the editor of the group's newletter for a year as well. Ah those were the days! When I inveigled a fledgling comics artist called D'Israeli (Matt Brooker) into drawing montly comic strips for the newsletter.

I drifted out of the fanzine thing, but I've stuck around in apas. I'm now a member of the American Amateur Press Association and the National Amateur Press Association. HP Lovecraft was a member of the latter.

[Madrea Marie]

No one where I live has heard of zines unless I have told them about them. I first learned of them when I was about 13, from my father Wild Bill Blackolive, realized his monthly published rant of his daily life was actually a zine, and that opened up a whole new world for both of us. I describe it a bit more on my page here.

[Giz]

I would like to write a zine about it.

I discover it, when I was thirteen, in some poseur-skateboard related shop, and indie record shop were handing a punk-zine called Neurones (20 issues), wrote by a local punk-ska-psychobilly-surf show promoter called les maskes feuillus. and some times others free zines (Désilusion mag, and procès-verbal). I joined the Neurones crew two years later, stapling the zine on a kitchen table, and wrote a pop-punk record review on the last issue...

Nobody was involve in the zine-stuff. and all the zines available were free, because no one want to take care of it, or sell it in their shops. Once, I ask the record-store owner, and He told me that zines can't be sold. My first zine project was aborted, I wasn't all-DIY at this time. last year, while orering some cheap records overseas (US), I found the Alex wrekk little unexpensive book about zines, and bought it : it's awesome, there is a Huge zinesters community out there, and not only punk-related zines.

it could be an idea for a 24h/zine in 24pages...

[Dominique Ford]

i discovered zines about 4 years ago in tecumseh, oklahoma by reading a book called Hard Love (i know kinda lame) but it really sparked my interest in the zine culture. A couple of days ago i started to think about the book again (no idea why) and read up on zines online. then i made my first zine in two days. it's only 8 pages, but it was a lot of fun and in that short time i became addicted, so yes i'm a noob. i plan to keep making them for a long, long time.